I'm sitting in my office, waiting for Ramadan. I don't know when it's coming! So while I wait, I figured I would tell all y'all about the girls camp I'm going to be working with in a couple weeks!
I’m SUPER EXCITED ABOUT THIS! Notice my sudden use of exclamation marks and capital letters! No but really. I’ve probably alluded to how rough girls have it here in previous posts – and not to get on a soapbox, but the things you’d probably imagine are true: Young girls come home from school and do ALL of the housework, ALL of the cooking, and ALL of the heavy labor – they literally never rest. Then, they are often married around age 16 – even here in the city – and drop out of school. These facts weren't new to me -- I mean, I've read Newsweek since I was like 9 (thanks Dad!). But seeing this reality in almost every single girl I see still shocks me. The entire cycle is so much more widespread than I would have imagined. And it’s just so crazy for me to remember what my life was like at 12 or 13 – my only work was school, and after school, I’d do fun things, like gymnastics or track or drama club or making smoothies or just reading in my room. The girls here have no time like that. At all. And everything I've been doing for the past, what... eight years?... they never have a chance for any of it. Traveling, college, high school, random jobs, living in a city, doing nothing when I wanted, doing everything when I wanted -- the experiences that I consider to be the most valuable, the ones that really made me who I am, almost all of them just miss out on all of it. And for that reason – I am so excited to be part of an entire WEEK where they will get to just… be kids, and do camp things, like tie-dying and charades and games.
But if we play competitive games, I hope they are aware that I will win. Because I am not going to go easy on them.
That being said, the camp also does a lot of cool stuff like teach about nutrition, careers, and planting trees. Yeah for practicality! Woo! I think they’re having me lead the session about nutrition. Which is kind of hilarious, especially the lesson will involve us making moringa beignets. I support this! Moringa beignets ARE nutritious – they are full of vitamins and minerals! But they are also like donuts. I’ll be teaching about a food that is basically like eating a donut with a vitamin on top of it. Whatever, I’ll talk about the food pyramid too.
And IF you want to read more about the camp or donate toward it, you can do so here:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/
Word!
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